"You see it is this way. I am not free to do as I might wish—as other men are free. I have consecrated my life to the service of God in this place. I know—I knew when I came here—that it was no place to bring a woman. There are few who could stand the life. It is filled with privations and hardships. They are inevitable. You are used to tender care and luxury. No man could ask a sacrifice like that of a woman he loved. He would not be a man if he did. It is not like marrying a girl who has felt the call herself, and loves to give her life to the work. That would be a different matter. But a man has no right to expect it of a woman——" he paused to find the right words and Hazel in a small still voice of dignity reminded him:
"You are forgetting one of the reasons."
"Forgetting?" he turned towards her wonderingly and their eyes met for just an instant, then hers were turned away again.
"Yes," she went on inscrutably. "You thought I—was not—fit!"
She was pulling up bits of green from the ground beside her. She felt a frightened flutter in her throat. It was the point of the thorn that had remained in her heart. It was not in nature for her not to speak of it, yet when it was spoken she felt how it might be misunderstood.
But the missionary made answer in a kind of cry like some hurt creature.
"Not fit! Oh, my dear! You do not understand——"
There was that in his tone that extracted the last bit of rankling thorn from Hazel's heart and brought the quick blood to her cheeks again.
With a light laugh that echoed with relief and a deep new joy which she dared not face as yet, she sprang to her feet.
"Oh, yes, I understand," she said gaily, "and it's all true. I'm not a bit fit for a missionary. But oughtn't we to be moving on? I'm quite rested now."